Are Traditional Family Games a thing of the past?

Board games have evolved massively over the years. As a child my memories of board games were Monopoly, Draughts, Cluedo, Guess Who and many many more. All games that we could play as a family to pass the time away. Hours of fun was had by all.

My favorite game was Monopoly a game that give me an insight to Real Estate (ironically enough, I now have a career as an Estate Agent). Is that a coincidence or did my childhood obsession with Monopoly play on by subconscious?

Many Sunday afternoons were spent with my four sisters playing, or should I say rowing over this fabulous game. The first row would normally be about who would like to be the iron, shoe, car etc (these were the items that you had to chose from to represent you on the board as you played). My favourite was always the dog!

The next row would be about who went first, and then the next would be about who would play the role of the Banker.

Finally the game would begin, and how much fun we had. Hours and hours of fun week after week.

How things have changed? Today, whilst we still have the old traditional Board games, and I guess we always will, Games are far more advanced, and are often played on computers, or via DVD Players using your Television sets.

You can now play a board game on your own against a Computer (who will act as your opponent) as opposed to playing with friends and/or family. I find this quite sad, especially knowing how much fun we had as children interacting with each other, and observing each other as we rowed over such meaningless but then important issues.

I now see my own nephews spending hours on their own in front of a computer playing games without any physical human interaction, whilst their parents get on with other things. I guess one advantage is that if you are an only child you don’t miss out on not playing games just because you had no-one else to play it with you. The Traditional games such as monopoly can now be played on a computer and the Computer can act as your opponent. You can even set what level of difficulty you want to play at.

The disadvantage to this, in my opinion is that the family getting together and interacting with each other seems to be a thing of the past.